Semira Adamu, Never Again

Which black people definitely deserve a special place in our collective memory? On the occasion of Black History Month, Stella Nyanchama Okemwa reminds us of the Nigerian asylum seeker Semira Adamu, who was horrifically killed by Belgian police officers on 1998.

Semira Precious Adamu
15 April 1978 - 22 September 1998
Kaduna State, Nigeria.

Semira was an activist who refused to give up on her quest to somehow gain asylum. She succeeded in resisting five attempts that had been made to forcibly deport and repatriate her. On the sixth attempt, she was accidentally asphyxiated to death in the course of exerting a 'cushion technique' that was the authorized method of restraint during forcible deportations. Semira embodies women’s struggle for dignity and resistance against inhuman asylum and migration policies. Her death had a major impact on migration and deportation policy. She will always be a reminder that transmigrants, asylum-seekers, refugees and undocumented people are above all human beings.

Semira was vulnerable to various racialised intersections of exclusion:

She was Black, female, young and ambitious
She was attractive, eloquent and well educated
She was an asylum-seeker whose application had been rejected
She was an undocumented person with an 'illegal' status
She was a deportable detainee who was deemed expendable
She was a whistleblower and defender of detainee rights

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Semira was born in 1978 at Kaduna State in Nigeria. She was a well-adjusted, educated woman who spoke several languages. She came from a good family that gave her access to formal education. Like any other 20 year old, Semira wanted to forge her own career and to have freedom to decide how to lead her life. She had ambitions to study and become a nurse because she was aware that there was a great shortage of nurses in her country.

Semira found out that her suitor was a 65 year old man who had three wives and was reputed to be very violent.

Unfortunately, her stepmother had other plans for her. She had become Semira's legal guardian after the death of her parents. Guardianship was more trouble than lust for her stepmother. Money was hard to come by and her meagre funds would have been stretched even further if she had given in to Semira’s plans to study. So studying was simply out of the question. She decided that Semira had to get married and sought her a suitor. Semira found out that her suitor was a 65 year old man who had three wives and was reputed to be very violent. He was even suspected of bludgeoning one of his wives to death in an aggressive drunken fury.

Although arranged marriages are customary in her culture and polygamy is valued as an established institution, Semira refused to get married for fear of her life. Moreover, she had envisioned a better life for herself. So she fled to Togo, but not for long because the family of her next of kin tracked her down and escorted her back. That is when Semira knew that she had to go much further away if she was to escape from her family.

Semira came up with the plan to seek asylum in a country where she could be free to determine her choices in life and to pursue her own dreams.

Semira had heard stories of other Nigerian girls who had found a better life in Germany. That is how she came up with the plan to seek asylum in a country where she could be free to determine her choices in life and to pursue her own dreams. So on March 25 1988, she decided to flee to Germany and apply for asylum. The flight from Lomé to Berlin made a routine stopover at Zaventem, Belgium. When she was asked by the immigration officer for papers, she could not present anything since she had no official documents. She decided to apply for asylum in Belgium because she did not want to be sent back to Nigeria.

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Semira was taken to Zaventem for the sixth and last time. She was escorted onto a plane by six gendarmes, who boarded with her before the passengers so that they would not see her. It was alleged that they subjected her to verbal abuse whilst she resisted by kicking and scratching and singing defiantly. The gendarmes are legally allowed to subdue the resistance of a deported person by pushing his or her head into a cushion. They used this cushion technique to silence Semira by pressing her head onto a cushion. She writhed and jerked against the pressure but they continued holding her down for 11 agonizing minutes. She urinated and most probably also defecated: in the recording retrieved during the trial, the gendarmes could be heard saying 'She stinks'. After a while they noticed that she was breathing 'strangely' and was no longer resisting the pressure. She suddenly became motionless. 'At one point I noticed that she was making a sobbing sound…like someone weeping... It was only three or four sobs. After that I didn't hear anything', said one of the gendarmes years later at the trial.

When the gendarme took her head off the pillow, they saw that she had indeed soiled herself in all the fuss. He sprayed perfume over Semira and the seat to neutralize the stench. She had lost consciousness, so a medical assistance was immediately summoned to examine her. He immediately recommended that she should be rushed to hospital. So once again Semira was taken off the plane but this time it wasn't to Steenokkerzeel, but to the Saint-Gilles hospital in Brussels.

Her death triggered a wave of popular protest which reached its climax during her funeral that was held four days later.

It took a long time before she was officially declared dead despite the fact that she had been clinically dead on arrival at the hospital that morning. Finally, her death was officially announced during a press conference given by the hospital director on the evening of the 22nd of September. The forensic evidence and subsequent autopsy confirmed that she had died of a cerebral embolism caused by asphyxiation.

Her death triggered a wave of popular protest which reached its climax during her funeral that was held four days later. The ceremony took place at the Cathedral of Saints-Michel-et-Gudule in Brussels – the equivalent of Notre-Dame de Paris. This Cathedral is famed for hosting the royal family and renowned Belgian personalities. The funeral was attended by 6,000 people. Toots Thielemans, a popular musician, played his most subdued version of Ne Me Quitte Pas by yet another popular musician – Jacques Brel.

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'Never again' was chanted in the 1998 anti-expulsion protests that denounced inhumane migration policies, detentions, and expulsions. The phase or slogan was derived from Jewish protests against the Holocaust and other genocides. It originated from a 1927 poem by Yitzhak Lamdan which stated 'Never again shall Masada fall!' In the context of genocide, the slogan was used by liberated prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp to express anti-fascist sentiment. 'Never again' has also been appropriated as a political slogan for various other causes. Today the slogan resonates with the 'Never Again Action' political action organized primarily by Jewish organizations to protest against detention centers in the U.S.. These activists use various forms of civil disobedience and nonviolent methods to protest the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Semira’s struggles are far from finished as long as undocumented migrants are still being detained and forcibly expelled.

Sentiments similar to those expressed by the anti-ICE protesters were echoed by some of the 6000 people who had gathered to attend Semira’s funeral. The chant 'Never again' resounded deafeningly as the protesters condemned the closed detention centers that continue to destroy lives; the beatings, racist insults and mistreatment of detainees; the scarcity of food and sub-standard living conditions; the constant fear and psychological pressure. There was a consensus that detention and confinement literally kill.

On the 20th commemoration of Semira’s death, there was a resolute comeback of the 'Never Again' sentiments that had been articulated in 1998. The activists also shouted 'They killed a woman, not her struggle' to condemn the plight of the many 'Semira Adamu’s' who are still struggling for their freedom behind closed walls. Semira’s struggles are far from finished as long as undocumented migrants are still being detained and forcibly expelled.

The 'never again' slogan is chanted in honor of Semira as well as all the current and future Semira’s whose lives are at risk because of inhumane migration policies.

Contemporary tributes to Semira Adamu also invoke the 'never again' slogan in actions organized to protest the racialised and inhumane migration policies. Firstly, these policies have the propensity to erect visible and invisible walls that divide, curtail and thereby stigmatize the mobility of fellow human beings. Secondly, they have the propensity to support the unequal power relations that engender and perpetuate racism on the basis of class, gender, sexual orientation and skin colour. Thirdly, they have the propensity to facilitate and thereby determine the plight of thousands of victims at the European borders. Fourthly, they have the propensity to legally justify and thereby institutionalize the European inertia towards addressing the plight of migrants. This is particularly the case when this inertia results in a structural failure to prevent or minimise undue fatalities of migrants in the mediterranean sea or at the hands of human traffickers. The anti-expulsion Collectives also organise protests that are aimed at raising public awareness to the plight of asylum-seekers, migrants and undocumented people. These protests have the propensity of exposing the collusion of Belgium with the European Union migration policies that are detrimental to the safety, wellbeing and ultimate survival of migrants. The Collectives strongly condemn the perpetual inertia of political leaders and call for action to be taken against the racialised and inhumane migration policies. The 'never again' slogan is thus chanted in honor of Semira as well as all the current and future Semira’s whose lives are at risk because of these policies.

Never Again was chanted so that Semira’s voice would finally be heard and her message heeded by those in a position to structurally change the status quo.

Never Again was chanted because Semira Adamu’s struggles are far from finished as long as undocumented migrants are still being forcibly detained and expelled.

Never Again is still being chanted to counter the deafening silence of the politicians and the media.

It is chanted in solidarity with those who fall prey to migration policies that strip them of their basic human rights.

It is chanted for all those who are being detained today and might be expelled tomorrow.

It is chanted so that the ‘never again’ that was chanted for Semira Adamu would finally be heard and heeded by those in a position to structurally change the status quo.

Never Again.

‘They killed Semira, not her struggle.’